Bolsonaro and beyond: South America is scorching, so what can be done about it?
Claire Wordley
Claire studied Zoology at the University of Sheffield, and completed a PhD on the impact of agriculture on tropical bats at the University of Leeds. She has since worked at the RSPB and University of Cambridge, and is now juggling freelance writing and activism.
In April 2019, climate activist Greta Thunberg uttered the immortal lines ‘Act like our house is on fire. Because it is.’ By August, those words rang all too true as wildfires swept the globe from Siberia to Sevilla. As the skies turned black with smoke over São Paulo, the media began reporting fires in the Amazon rainforest. The internet was awash with condemnation of Brazil’s President Bolsonaro, with questions about the images used to illustrate the story, and with pundits saying the fires weren’t anything exceptional. Then the media storm swept away, leaving the firestorms raging.
So are the fires in 2019 - many still burning at the time of writing in October - anything out of the ordinary? Why is a damp, humid rainforest on fire anyway? And what can people far from the flames do to help?
Fire in Bolivia: Photo credit Ipa Ibañez
How much has burned in 2019, and how does that compare to previous years?
While Brazil has hit the headlines, there have been fires across much of South America, especially in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru. Bolivia has had its worst year for fires since 2010, with the number of fires well above the 20 year average. 5.3 million hectares - an area larger than the whole of Costa Rica - have burned in the country, 40% of it forest. Despite rains putting out fires at the start of October, some were relit.
The number of fires in Brazil was also the worst since 2010, although well below levels in the mid 2000s and around the 20 year average for the country. Around 7.6 million hectares of the Brazilian Amazon - an area larger than Ireland - was deforested up to September. Again, the deforestation is well below the numbers for the mid 2000s, but conservationists fear that the increase may reflect a return to the ‘bad old days’ of Amazon clearance.
While some aspects are similar, there are important differences in what was happening in the countries. While dramatic images were used to illustrate stories of out-of-control forest fires in Brazil, in fact most fires were set on land where the trees had already been felled. In most places, the fires were not penetrating and burning the live rainforest. However, in Bolivia, out-of-control fires really were raging through previously intact dry forests.
Does that mean that there is nothing to worry about in Brazil? Far from it. Deforestation is trending sharply upwards - just that the fires are more a consequence of the deforestation than the cause of it. So far this year, Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation is the worst of the last decade.
Most of the fires in Peru also appear to have been set on previously cleared land, with a relatively small amount of forest burned despite an above average number of fires. In Paraguay, fires damaged over 70% of one national park, parts of several other parks, and over 300,000 ha of Paraguayan Chaco. While many fires were set within Paraguay, Paraguay is asking for compensation from Bolivia for damage caused by flames which crossed from the neighbouring country.
What has burned?
While the Amazon rainforest has dominated the headlines, other rich natural habitats have also felt the heat. In Bolivia, most of the habitat that burned was the unique Chiquitano dry forest, and savanna such as the Cerrado. Severe fires also raged through the Chaco dry forest and seasonally flooded forest such as the Pantanal, with some of the country’s Amazon burning too.
In Brazil, most fires have occurred in the Cerrado savanna (about half), followed by the Amazon rainforest (about a third of fires), with fires also set in the Pantanal wetlands and Atlantic forest. All of these habitats are rich in wildlife, and many of them are also critical in water cycles across a huge area.
Chiquitano dry forest. Photo credit Alfredo Romero-Muñoz
Are the fires a problem?
While both fires and deforestation have been high this year, no records have been set. But that does not mean that there is no need to worry about the Amazon rainforest or South America’s other rich ecosystems.
Locally, there are ongoing problems with air pollution, and as the rains finally come, there are issues with water being contaminated with ashes. The charred ground may be difficult or impossible to restore completely, as the microorganisms in it will have been killed. Local water cycles will be affected, which could cause droughts. Furthermore, many Indigenous people have lost their home, and face an uncertain and difficult future.
There are also the sheer numbers of animals killed or displaced by the flames. Estimates from Bolivia - where fires raged within living forest - range from two to 18 million animals killed. While some animals can flee the flames, there may be no habitat for them to return to once the fires die down. Bolivia’s former ambassador to the UN, Pablo Solón, argued movingly that burning should never be allowed when it could cause agony and death to other living creatures.
Images: Bolivia’s Otuquis National Park after the fires - photo credit: Franklin Martinez
There’s also less and less of the Amazon - and other habitats - left to lose. Humans have destroyed about 18% of the Amazon rainforest since 1970. The thing is, rainforests like the Amazon actually create their own climate. The breathing of the trees creates much of the clouds and rain that in turn keep the rainforest going. If the Amazon gets too small, not enough rain will be produced, and much of the rainforest will flip into a scrubby, low biodiversity state that won’t sequester much carbon. Both deforestation and a heating climate, which means more droughts, could tip the Amazon rainforest over the edge. Combined, they are even more potent; at the current rate of global heating, the ‘tipping point’ from rainforest to scrub may be as low as 20-25%. Therefore, we need deforestation rates to be zero.
Map of the remaining Amazon - green - and deforested Amazon - yellow. Photo Credit: TerraBrasilis
Deforestation is the second largest contributor to climate breakdown after burning fossil fuels, so all deforestation should alarm us, especially where the destruction of forests is increasing. For the Amazon to carry on absorbing carbon it needs to be growing, not shrinking, otherwise our largest carbon sink will become a carbon source.
Will the forests recover?
There’s been a lot of speculation about if - and when - forests could regenerate. These vary by forest type. The wet forests of the Amazon, for example, are not adapted to fire - the pollen records show the fire only arrived in the Amazon with people, and that most fires set for millenia were relatively small. This makes it hard to extrapolate recovery times. One study showed that South America’s forests are among the slowest to recover in the world, taking an average of three centuries to bounce back after various disasters. Climate change may make that recovery even more difficult.
Even Bolivia’s Chiquitano dry forests - which contain some fire-adapted species - will probably not recover quickly. Some researchers I spoke to think the burned forests may be lost for good - others predicted a recovery time of around two centuries. One key factor will be whether the area is left to recover, or is given over to soy or cattle, which will disturb the area further and prevent regeneration
“ It takes over a kilometre squared to produce a single kilogram of beef protein, compared to 130 square metres for a kilo of pork protein, 80 square metres for a kilo of chicken protein, and just 10 metres squared for a kilo of protein from pulses such as beans and lentils. ”
What policies caused this?
In Brazil, Bolsonaro has been clear about his desire to turn the Amazon over to agribusiness, mostly to grow cattle and soy for export. He has forced the environmental agency to announce in advance every time it will raid illegal loggers, allowing criminals to get away. 2019 has seen the fewest fines for logging in over a decade, and seizures of illegal wood have been meagre. These policies send a clear signal that there is little or nothing to lose from deforestation, and everything to gain, as people are unlikely to be cleared off lands they have deforested.
Leaked documents show that Bolsonaro’s plans don’t end here. He aims to use hate speech to isolate Indigenous peoples and NGOs. He then wants to occupy the Amazon and fill it with infrastructure projects - megadams, roads, and bridges. These projects would maintain a government presence in the Amazon and prevent conservation projects from going ahead. This year’s spike in deforestation is unlikely to be anomaly.
In Bolivia, too, the burning is related to agribusiness. While Bolivia’s President Morales speaks of his love for Mother Earth, his policies have not been as far from Bolsonaro’s as his rhetoric may lead us to believe. The fires came just a month after Morales announced a Supreme Decree which allowed forests to be burned for the first time. His government plans to expand the country’s agricultural area from 3.5 to 13 million hectares in the next decade. The area burned this year would, if settlers are allowed on the land, put Bolivia just over halfway towards realising that goal.
As in Brazil, this land is mostly not to grow food for Bolivians. Most of this land is to be used to grow beef and soy for export - the government has recently made plans to send huge amounts of beef to China, with the first shipment celebrated even as the fires raged.
What can be done to prevent more deforestation?
Unfortunately, stopping the deforestation is far from easy, requiring national policy changes and enforcement, along with changes in international trade and appetites.
Within Brazil, and especially within Bolivia, there have been huge protests against the forest destruction. In Bolivia, millions of people have voted in citizen gatherings to repeal laws allowing forest burning, and an Indigenous march of almost 500 km demands the same.
Cattle ranching. Photo credit: Idenir.
At the international level, the EU could demand stronger environmental and human rights protections in the trade deal they are negotiating with the Mercosur bloc, which includes Brazil but not Bolivia. Austria has already rejected the deal - which needs unanimous support to be ratified - because it does not demand stringent enough standards, and France, Ireland and Luxembourg have also threatened to block it.
The threat of losing the EU trade deal has been part of wider pressure on Bolsonaro. This appears to have forced him to backtrack on some of his rhetoric, and to send in the army to tackle the fires. Another source of pressure was a statement published by Principles for Responsible Investment, in which 230 global investors warned that companies growing goods in Brazil must meet their low/no deforestation commitments or risk economic consequences. Asking your pension supplier or similar whether they have signed this is a possible pressure point.
But as long as there is a market for Latin American beef, and for Latin American soy to feed to farm animals across the world, the devastation will continue. An Indigenous led call for people in the Global North to stop eating beef said that 80% of Brazilian deforestation was linked to cattle ranching. It takes over a kilometre squared to produce a single kilogram of beef protein, compared to 130 square metres for a kilo of pork protein, 80 square metres for a kilo of chicken protein, and just 10 metres squared for protein from pulses such as beans and lentils. Therefore, to reduce the amount of land it takes to grow our food, the best thing we can do is cut down or cut out beef, followed by other meats. Some institutions such as the University of Cambridge are already cutting out beef - and other ruminants like lamb - from their canteen menus.
In the face of the fires this year we may feel helpless, but we should not stop being outraged by deforestation, nor should we stop examining our own role in it. People both inside and outside South America can pressure governments into doing better, through our individual choices and, more importantly, our collective campaigns. It will never be easy, but it will never be pointless, either.
Protestors in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, call for laws allowing forest burning to be repealed. Photo credit Kev Alemán.